You nailed it - when the part comes out of the mold, it slides down a chute onto a conveyor belt. From here, the arms themselves change depending on the supplier (Kuka/Fanuc/Universal Robotics/Yaskawa...there are a lot of players in the space,) but they're all used to hold the part in the air so we can take images on all sides -- then the arm moves the part to its correct spot (good bin/bad bin)
for computing the grasping position -- your mileage may vary depending on which axis/face matters the most for an object (in an automotive part, you want to grasp the side that's not customer-facing because people care less about a scratch there) but it's a real challenge.
Luckily EtherCAT + protobuf's adoption has helped keep the comms integration low -- even a few years ago we'd need to make a weird hop from camera --> PLC --> arm but things are slowly getting easier
for computing the grasping position -- your mileage may vary depending on which axis/face matters the most for an object (in an automotive part, you want to grasp the side that's not customer-facing because people care less about a scratch there) but it's a real challenge.
Luckily EtherCAT + protobuf's adoption has helped keep the comms integration low -- even a few years ago we'd need to make a weird hop from camera --> PLC --> arm but things are slowly getting easier